When I read a poem, I immerse myself in every verse and try to discover the mystery between each line. I become the poet. Fighting for justice, in love, broken-hearted, grieving, happy, depressed, lost, found, and free. When I write, I breathe. When I write, I discover who I was, who I am, and who I’m becoming. When I write, I uncover a brave voice. When I write, I allow myself to dream and then I dream of the dreams I want to experience out of my subconscious mind. Which leaves me questioning, did Dr. Martin Luther King do the same? Did he protect himself from the scenes that played before his eyes by seeing a dream come true before we did?
I was twelve when Maya Angelou’s poem “Caged Bird” found me in a classroom. A sense of familiarity transpired in my soul with every rhythm and rhyme. I was the bird discovering poetic dreams that would later become caged. What would a child know about being a “Phenomenal Woman?” I just knew I wanted to be one, the woman, the confidence, and the poem.
After Maya, Julia de Burgos’ poem “To Julia de Burgos” found me in my late twenties while I was living in Puerto Rico. This vulnerable piece unmasked an internal battle that addressed her two identities—the woman suppressed by society and the fierce poet with a voice that roared for equality and for an entire nation. “I bare my heart in all my poems,” expresses Julia, speaking for all of us who need poetry like we need a pulse.
This time around I wasn’t a child anymore and my journals weren’t personal venting sessions—they were poems stripping me bare, heart left on skin thick paper, and tears confused for ink. For me poetry isn’t a genre, it’s the way I process life and the language my soul speaks when I’m struggling to articulate what my mind and body need from me.
Now decades later, the poetic dreams that rest on my pillow console me while my mattress holds the weight of a body that has become a stranger. Textbooks say it’s Lyme Disease, I say it’s hell—and that’s how I became a caged bird. The day it arrived; I plucked my feathers, and my voice lost its wings. Can you see the beautiful flowers, they would ask? But all I could see were the metal bars around me. Dreams turned to nightmares and darkness surrounded a home that lost its sweetness. I began to wear masks to protect me from a society that knew nothing about this illness, but eventually I kept it on to protect me from myself. Slowly, I vanished in the midst of survival.
The way back to self was a turbulent one. I tried different methods but none of them had a lasting effect. Then on a random day like today, I began to have lucid dreams. I was out of the cage and my voice grew back its wings when I saw her. The little girl who would write poetry in her head and at times would write them down right before she went to bed. That very morning, I became the poem. Fearless, fearful, broken-hearted, grieving, happy, depressed, lost but found—knowing that freedom is on the other side of every poem. I wrote, and wrote, and wrote, until my two identities came face to face—the patient and the poet.
This season was bittersweet. The patient suppressed and found comfort in silence. On the other hand, the poet expressed with an unfiltered voice. When conflict arose between the two, the patient had the upper hand at first because the physical pain had the ability to keep her dreamless—or so she thought. Poets are loud but move in silence. Words and metaphors permeate the soul finding homes in bodies. And that’s how Bittersweet Body found its way out of my journals. The patient left paper trails when she chronicled her experiences with heartbreak, childhood, and chronic illness… while the poet waited, and waited, and waited until midnight.
They say when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. I say, when life gives you limes, create art. So, dear friend, protect yourself from the scenes that play before your eyes. Tonight, after midnight, dream poetically because some dreams get a second chance to live when they become poems.
shhh
i'm dreaming
do not wake me up
when my eyes are wide shut
i am somewhere in space
right between the moon and the heavens
i am either at war being chased by a faceless monster
or in the middle of a desert chasing my dreams poetically
and prophetically
most likely thirsty
dry throat
cotton mouth
searching for water
but forced to devour words in order to quench my thirst
i,
trapped in a lucid dream
we,
trapped in a world that wants to rob us from them
i,
sip every syllable like it’s my last
how long will these words last?
will they rot like false promises and politics?
will they find me in this desert?
faced down with open wounds
or on a camel that lost its hump
will they save me?
will they save us?
shhh
do not wake me up
i found the camel’s hump
and sunflowers
and i saw a light
i think it was God
i hope it was God
i see a rock
and a snake
and more words forming together
as i pass through this dry riverbed
but now i’m parched
seeking the American Dream
trying to decipher it
with sonnets and prose
with its fangs in my heart
when will this dream end
and that dream start
shhh
do not wake me up
i rather dream poetically
here i am free
and can change my story
shhh
do not wake me up
i found water
dripping from other dreams
and an ocean in the middle of this desert
shhh
do not wake me up
the war has ended
